Health Care / Medicine

Henrietta Lacks's Family Is Holding Researchers Accountable Under A New Theory

The amount of profit that has been made without giving the family a dime is bewildering.

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Judge’s gavel and stethoscope on court room table.

(Image via Getty)

For a long time, many Black people have been hesitant about going to the doctor. It is not just the generalized “American healthcare is expensive” either. Though that definitely play a role, there are other factors: doctors don’t believe when Black patients reports that they are in pain, death in childbirth is exceptionally high in Black children and Black mothers, not to mention the suspicion that the doctors are doing weird tests on you or harvesting your body without your permission. Growing up, reading about the Tuskegee Syphillis experiments did little to calm the anxieties of going to the doctor.  After learning about John Hopkins’s decision to harvest Henrietta Lacks’s cells, routine check-ups became suspect too. Thankfully, Henrietta’s family has finally seen a little justice. From The Baltimore Banner:

Settling a lawsuit typically marks the end of a legal battle.

But relatives of Henrietta Lacks said Tuesday the historic agreement they just reached with a biotechnology company that used and profited off her cells without their permission is the start of a fight that could ensnare untold numbers of other firms that do the same.

It is hard to understate the staggering amount of research and medical developments that were made possible with Henrietta Lacks’s cells (HeLa cells). A short article won’t do it justice — I’ll leave an introductory video for you to watch if you aren’t already familiar:

Legally speaking, the settlement is significant because the family relied on a theory of unjust enrichment. Prior to this, cases where a medical facility has taken biologic material from a patient without their (or their family’s) consent have relied on underlying property-based arguments. Those cases usually fail. While it is new, the use of unjust enrichment may open up medical researchers to liability for past and future violations of medical standards.

“This could be endless,” said Robyn Shapiro of the Wisconsin-based Health Sciences Law Group LLC. “The boundaries of what we’re talking about do seem far and wide.”

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We wish the best to Lacks family. May their successes lead to changes that make it a little less scary to go to the doctor. If you’d like to learn more about Henrietta’s life and her importance to medicine, read this. A warning if you live in Tennessee — that state out of all the others apparently found the scene where Henrietta discovers a cancer lump to be a bit too sexual. What is with these states and their censorship?

Like Henrietta Lacks’ Immortal Cells, The Legal Case Lives On: More Lawsuits Expected [The Baltimore Banner]

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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